Emergency Alert System freezes my Mini once a week

The alert was cancelled hours ago on my Roamio, but that night when we crank up the Mini, the EAS scroll is on the Mini. All the functions have ceased to work on the remote and the only way I can get it to work is to unplug the Mini from the power.

Is there another way to "thaw" my Mini other than unplugging it? TIA for any help

FWIW, the Mini is connected to the Roamio via MoCA and it's the only Mini attached to the Roamio

I have not had any EAS interruptions on the Mini at least any that I know of. One of my two Minis would lock up frequently like yours frozen with either a blank screen or the main menu with the view window displaying the Pause symbol. Sometimes I could recover using the HDUI reset like you I would get a delayed error "thud" for the button presses half a minute later I would hear the conformation beep and the Mini would recover. When the HDUI reset did not work I disconnected the Coax cable and the Mini would recover with a network error message. I switched the 2 and the problem stayed with the location so Saturday I ran a network cable and switched that Mini to use Ethernet I have not seen the lock up since Knock on wood.

My configuration was both Mini's using the Premiere XL4 for the MoCA bridge. The problem Mini had 2 splitters and about 40' of coax between the XL4. the Other Mini is on the first 4 way splitter.

I have not had any EAS interruptions on the Mini at least any that I know of. One of my two Minis would lock up frequently like yours frozen with either a blank screen or the main menu with the view window displaying the Pause symbol. Sometimes I could recover using the HDUI reset like you I would get a delayed error "thud" for the button presses half a minute later I would hear the conformation beep and the Mini would recover. When the HDUI reset did not work I disconnected the Coax cable and the Mini would recover with a network error message. I switched the 2 and the problem stayed with the location so Saturday I ran a network cable and switched that Mini to use Ethernet I have not seen the lock up since Knock on wood.

My configuration was both Mini's using the Premiere XL4 for the MoCA bridge. The problem Mini had 2 splitters and about 40' of coax between the XL4. the Other Mini is on the first 4 way splitter.

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In my situation, it is impractical to run ethernet to the Mini. I tried using a wireless bridge and ethernet from there, but it didn't really work. The MoCA network using the Roamio as a MoCA bridge that I'm currently using is much better and is quick and responsive, but it just has this one problem with freezing.

Make sure not to leave the Mini paused on a show when turning off the TV. My wife is in the habit of doing this on her main TiVo so she does it on the Mini as well. When it's paused like that it thinks you're actively watching so it will accept the EAS signal, grab a tuner and drop to live TV. As long as it's on the little screen saver thing I believe it ignores EAS.

Try disconnecting the Coax for a few seconds, that might free it up, instead of a reboot.

Both my Minis grab a tuner and switch to LiveTV with every EAS test, and keep that tuner for 4 hours, unless you go back to TiVo Central. Doesn't matter if it has been inactive or in-use at the time.

I have never had one lockup after an EAS test though.

I know that the behavior of the EAS test is very different between a Cisco system and a Motorola system. My provider finally implemented HUB specific EAS suppression, so instead of getting a test for every single county/area, I now only get the one per week.

Kind of late to the party here but those EAS broadcasts knock my Premiere back to a local channel (typically our local CBS or Government channel), regardless of what I am watching at the time (live, stream, or recorded program). This is particularly annoying if I'm not physically in front of the DVR and am recording a program. If an EAS broadcast happens to occur while I'm recording something, I lose the remaining portion of the program being recorded and instead, the channel the EAS broadcast sent the TiVo to is recorded. If I happen to be watching TV when the alert is broadcast, I have to wait for an additional 30 seconds or so after the alert has cleared before TiVo will allow me to change channels or modes (ie- return to watching a recorded program) and return to what I was watching.

This is a requirement of the CableCARD specification. The TiVo is required to display the EAS as long as it's receiving the signal from your cable company. If you leave it alone it should return to the previous channel it was on and complete whatever it was recording after the EAS is over.

This is a requirement of the CableCARD specification. The TiVo is required to display the EAS as long as it's receiving the signal from your cable company. If you leave it alone it should return to the previous channel it was on and complete whatever it was recording after the EAS is over.

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Thanks for the prompt reply Dan. In retrospect, I erroneously inferred that when watching live TV, the TiVo device always stays on whatever channel it changed to to display the EAS. There have been times when the DVR has returned to the original channel after x amount of time transpires (typically 30-60 seconds), but that seems to be the exception, not the rule. But, I can't recall a time when the DVR has returned to my pre-recorded program after displaying the EAS. I have to manually go to TiVo Central and return to watching the pre-recorded program that way.

It definitely wont return to your recording. I meant that if the EAS interrupts something that is being recorded it will return to that channel and finish recording that program once the EAS is over. You wont get a recording of the EAS channel for the remaining X minutes/hours.

If it kicks you to live TV while you're actively watching a previously recorded show then you have to wait until it's over and then return to that show manually. I tend to watch TV a lot late at night so I get interrupted by tests all the time like this. It's very annoying, especially since the station it uses is way louder then the ones I typically record. I've gotten into the habit of hitting mute as soon as I realize it's dumping me out to live TV so I don't have to hear it.

It definitely wont return to your recording. I meant that if the EAS interrupts something that is being recorded it will return to that channel and finish recording that program once the EAS is over. You wont get a recording of the EAS channel for the remaining X minutes/hours.

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Well, that's exactly what my Premiere did at about 10:30 a.m. today which is what triggered me to search this board to see if others had experienced the same issue. I was home but doing some work in the garage and I was recording Gangland Undercover on the History Channel and an EAS test alert came across. The channel was changed to I believe Channel 3 which is our local government access channel. After the alert cleared, the DVR stayed on the government access channel. Fortunately, I had come in from the garage and missed only about 9 minutes of the program I was recording. I had to manually change back to channel 56 so I could finish recording Gangland Undercover.

My TiVo has six tuners - are they all required to switch? Surely TiVo can switch one tuner, trying to avoid active recordings, and leave the rest alone.

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Observation on my weekly test. Roamio switches to cable company Info channel, does the test, switches back. Mini gets enabled (grabs a tuner) and displays the message. It does not release the tuner until the four hour timeout or I do it manually. I normally leave it on the info channel, but I will move it to see if it switches back next week.

Make sure not to leave the Mini paused on a show when turning off the TV. My wife is in the habit of doing this on her main TiVo so she does it on the Mini as well. When it's paused like that it thinks you're actively watching so it will accept the EAS signal, grab a tuner and drop to live TV. As long as it's on the little screen saver thing I believe it ignores EAS.

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From my own personal experience, with the banner alerts the mini drops out of screensaver and displays live TV while the banner scrolls on top. I'm not seeing a problem with this. I'm glad it's all working the way it's supposed to.

The alert was cancelled hours ago on my Roamio, but that night when we crank up the Mini, the EAS scroll is on the Mini. All the functions have ceased to work on the remote and the only way I can get it to work is to unplug the Mini from the power.

Is there another way to "thaw" my Mini other than unplugging it? TIA for any help

FWIW, the Mini is connected to the Roamio via MoCA and it's the only Mini attached to the Roamio

Click to expand...

I've had this happen when my Roamio restarted in the middle of a test. Both are using ethernet. I simply restarted the mini and all was well.

I know that the behavior of the EAS test is very different between a Cisco system and a Motorola system. My provider finally implemented HUB specific EAS suppression, so instead of getting a test for every single county/area, I now only get the one per week.

Click to expand...

And which style of alert are you seeing? I know your on a Cisco headend since your using Cisco cards.

And which style of alert are you seeing? I know your on a Cisco headend since your using Cisco cards.

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Mine are a dark blue banner with scrolling pinkish (not really red) letters, that gets overlaid at the top of the screen of the foreground tuner. The EAS does not have any sound, the LiveTV sound is still heard.

All TiVos and Minis switch to LiveTV and then the scroll starts, for about 45 seconds